It is a they said, she said lawsuit of family against family as the children of Darrell Wayne Perry, a Nashville songwriter with credits that include Tim McGraw's Not a Moment Too Soon; Lorrie Morgan's What Part of No; Toby Keith's A Woman's Touch, I Only Miss You, and Every Promise I Ever Made; accuse their evangelical preaching aunt Darlene Bishop, and sister to the deceased, of causing the death of Perry by promising to cure him with prayer after his throat cancer diagnosis in 2003.

Perry's children say Bishop claimed she was cured of cancer through prayer and promised to cure her brother in the same way. According to news reporting, in her book Your Life Follows Your Words, Bishop wrote that faith and prayer cured her of her cancer and her brother Perry of his cancer. In a deposition, she is said to have admitted she was never diagnosed with cancer by a physician, even though she believed she had the disease.

After Perry's death from cancer, Bishop became the executor to his estate. According to the children, Bishop has not given them any of their inheritance, estimated at $750,000 dollars. The children are suing their aunt for wrongful death, clergy malpractice and fraud. Bishop denies all allegations.

The level of grief and the depth of sadness felt when losing a family member to cancer is without measure. You would think that nothing worse could possibly happen. This turn of events following the cancer diagnosis and death of Perry, however it turns out, and wherever the truth is to be found, has reached a new depth in an abyss of empty darkness.

When you are in a chat room, belong to an email discussion list, or for that matter, read a blog, you cannot be certain all of the time the other person is who they are representing themselves to be, and on some occasions, they are frauds with evil intent.

When it comes to blogs in the cancer community, given time in reading the blog, I have found most people are who they say they are -- but when it comes to chat rooms, there is a higher probability that the identity of the participant could be different than the person is in real life.

In Leeds Today, a news story has been published exposing a pervert who pretended to be a boy named Ricky with cancer, for the purposes of luring a teenage girl into a sexual encounter. Ricky was really a 45-year-old married man named Glen Marwood. But the 17-year-old girl believed his chat room story and began to offer emotional support and encouragement as Ricky went through cancer treatment. She became attached to Ricky and felt the relationship was developing romantically. Which is what Marwood was hoping and had planned.

Say what you will about medicine or alternative therapies -- but I say research, research, research -- and look at everything with a critical eye and cynical perspective. Be determined but never allow yourself to become desparate about any situation you are faced with in life. Because it will keep you more safe than sorry. Here's a cautionary tale I want you to remember.

Thai authorities have arrested an Austrian man, claiming to be a doctor, accused of injecting terminally ill Australians, a New Zealander and other foreigners with bogus chemical cancer cures. Hellfried Sartori, 67, the quack of a doctor who was stripped of his medical license in the 90's and jailed several times in the states, is now being charged with fraud and practicing medicine without a license overseas.

How did the people who came to him to be injected with potentially lethal substances in hopes of curing cancer find him? On the internet! He advertised his ozone treatments on the internet. Not only did he advertise he could cure cancer, but according to investigators, the man said he could cure AIDS, allergies and hardening of the arteries.

According to a news report in the Bangkok Nation, one Australian cancer patient, Kathleen Preston, died last summer in a Thai hospital. An autopsy report found an excessive amount of potassium in her blood. Her death is under investigation.